Abstract : Six Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) calibrator survey campaigns were run between 1994 and 2007 (VCS1, Beasley et al. 2002, cat. J/ApJS/141/13; VCS2, Fomalont et al. 2003, cat. J/AJ/126/2562; VCS3, Petrov et al. 2005, cat. J/AJ/129/1163; VCS4, Petrov et al. 2006, cat. J/AJ/131/1872; VCS5, Kovalev et al. 2007, cat. J/AJ/133/1236; VCS6, Petrov et al. 2008, cat. J/AJ/136/580)
We report on the results of a second epoch VLBA Calibrator Survey campaign (VCS-II) in which 2400 VCS sources were re-observed in the X and S bands.
The VLBA S/X (S band~2.3GHz and X band~8.6GHz) dual frequency system was used. We used the VLBA RDBE/Mark5C system, which has 16 32MHz channels and records 2 Gbits/s using 2 bit sampling. Due to S-band filters below 2200MHz and above 2400MHz at most of the VLBA antennas, and a broad area of RFI from SiriusXM satellites (2320-2345MHz), only four channels could be deployed in the S band (2220.0, 2252.0, 2284.0, and 2348.0MHz). The other 12 channels were deployed in the X band (8460.0, 8492.0, 8524.0, 8556.0, 8620.0, 8652.0, 8716.0, 8748.0, 8812.0, 8844.0, 8876.0, and 8908.0MHz).
We set a target of 300 sources per session, or 2400 total sources for the 8 VLBA sessions. We selected all sources from the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) S/X astrometric/geodetic catalog (available at http://gemini.gsfc.nasa.gov/solutions/ or by following the links at http://lupus.gsfc.nasa.gov/) between -50° and +90° decl. that had been observed in only 1 or 2 sessions as of mid 2013. This amounted to ~2060 sources. To fill out the list, we added ~340 additional sources that had been observed but not detected in the original VCS1-6 analysis.
The eight schedules were run between 2014 January and 2015 March (VCS-II-A/BG219A on 2014 01/04 10:04-01/05 10:02; VCS-II-B/BG219B1 on 2014 05/31 17:12-06/01 17:05; VCS-II-D/BG219D on 2014 06/09 09:13-06/10 09:10; VCS-II-C/BG219C on 2014 08/05 13:03-08/06 13:00; VCS-II-E/BG219E on 2014 08/09 00:00-08/09 23:55; VCS-II-F/BG219F on 2014 12/20 01:18-12/21 01:14; VCS-II-H/BG219H on 2015 01/23 23:00-01/24 22:55; VCS-II-I/BG219I on 2015 03/17 07:57-03/18 07:57).
Positions and other information for the 2062 re-observed and the 324 new sources are given in Tables 2 and 3.
(2 data files).